


understanding

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Character Believes They're An Inferior Substitute For Someone Else, Communication Failure, Established Relationship, Other, POV First Person, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-12 01:24:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20555918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: Aatr’s tits. What a fucking mess.I heard these words inside my head the way Seivarden would have said them and almost laughed, the worst possible thing I could do at the moment, certain to be misconstrued. “Seivarden, come back to bed, please.”





	understanding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venndaai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/gifts).

Seivarden got quiet sometimes after. I could never anticipate when or why and never really questioned her as she laid in my arms, mulling over her unhappy thoughts. At times like these, Ship never interfered or interjected, her feeds going quiet, too, as though to afford one or the other of them some privacy. It was nice in one way, relaxing, the best of both worlds left open to me: the comfort of my connection to Mercy of Kalr still there in the back of my mind with something of the privacy and solitude I’d learned, reluctantly, to accept. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t have traded it to have all of myself back—sometimes, I still thought I would do anything to have those days back—but in others I knew that I was better than I’d been while still fully Justice of Toren and did better work.

What I did now mattered and there were definitive upsides. For all the loss I had faced, there were gains, too.

My fingers brushed against Seivarden’s skin across the high arch of her cheek, still a bit warm from our exertions, and her face turned into the touch. A smile pulled at the corner of her mouth, but there was a melancholic slant to it. Her eyes fluttered open and she rolled her neck against my shoulder to better look up at me. “What are you thinking about?” she asked, drowsy, dreamy, her words almost hedging, like she didn’t expect an answer from me. And perhaps she wasn’t wrong to think that. Reticence was a rather familiar trait between us, though Seivarden’s was much improved over mine all these years on. “You’ve got a look.”

Under normal circumstances, Ship might’ve shown me what I looked like to Seivarden to illustrate Seivarden’s point, but right now, it was just us.

“And not one of your normal looks,” Seivarden continued. “Or, you know, the lack of them.” I sometimes still had trouble maintaining what humans recognized as appropriate resting expressions. Seivarden didn’t mind it, though, and the rest of the crew were growing used to it. Even without Ship, I could hear the hesitation in her voice, the nervousness. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine,” I answered, even and warm, because it was the truth. “I wasn’t thinking of anything at all.”

Seivarden snorted indelicately. A scoffing sound in the back of her throat that might have been laughter followed. The words she spoke were unnecessary given everything I knew about her already, but I wasn’t surprised to hear them anyway. Seivarden did love to listen to herself speak and I, too, have grown fond of the sound of her voice. “I find that hard to believe.”

I swallowed and looked toward the opposite wall and sighed in a way that made it clear to her that I was put out by her questioning, annoyed, but only in the most fond sort of way. “I was just thinking you looked very beautiful tonight.” The words were harder to get out of my mouth than they should have been perhaps, carried themselves like heavy stones in my mouth, awkward and cumbersome, the stress on the words all wrong. Perhaps I was making a fool of myself, saying as much to Seivarden; it wasn’t like she didn’t know that she was attractive.

Shifting, Seivarden narrowed her eyes, turning in my arms and pushing herself up. “You’re teasing me.”

I wasn’t, but if Seivarden wanted to believe that, she could. Rolling one shoulder, I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “If you say so.”

Seivarden stilled and settled again, but she was more tense than before, far less languid, more on guard. I wasn’t certain what I’d said to put her there, so I couldn’t fix it. “I do,” she said, disgruntled. “I can tell because you’ve never said that to me before.”

Now it was my turn to still. My mouth opened automatically to deny it. There was no possible way Seivarden was right. But I had a better memory than her and was directly plugged into Ship on top of that. If I wanted to, I could review our every interaction, which I did, because I couldn’t imagine—but it was true. I really had never told her… never even really told her what I felt.

My heart throbbed in my chest, pushed blood hard throughout my body, leaving me aching and woozy. I was ashamed to realize that Seivarden didn’t know the depths of my regard for her, not personally, not romantically. A great deal of effort was expended on ensuring she knew how I felt about her professional achievements, but here, within the privacy of my quarters, she really didn’t know. As my stomach tipped itself sideways in my abdomen, I swallowed. I couldn’t imagine how I’d missed this for so long.

“Seivarden,” I started, but having gotten there, I didn’t really know how to finish.

In truth, in all the years of my life, I’d never expressed myself in such a manner, not even to Lieutenant Awn. And now Seivarden had suffered for it, uncomfortable as she tried to pull free of me. Her motions were jerky, uncertain, but she didn’t fight me when I held her tight enough that she might bruise. She didn’t argue either, though she huffed unhappily, and I could see this encounter spinning out of our control if we let it. What was meant to be a compliment could easily turn into a weapon. It was the way of things between us; we both knew the other far too well. Anything between us could strike true, strike painful.

But maybe not well enough in the end. No matter what we went through, maybe there was always a layer that separated us.

“Seivarden, wait,” I said, somber. I was rarely in a teasing mood anyway, but now less than ever. It was I who shifted then, laying her back onto the pillows to hold myself over her. I’m sure my features were serious as I took her in, analyzed every inch of her, as though seeing her for the first time. My hands brushed over her neck, down her chest. I looked her up and down and knew that my assessment was correct and more so that my assessment was correct as far as I was concerned, too. Not only was she objectively beautiful, I found her beautiful, too.

Despite everything we’d done to one another and because of everything we’d weathered together, I was lucky to have her. But perhaps she didn’t know that.

“I mean it,” I said, aware that my voice was shaking, that I didn’t feel like myself as I spoke the words. And Seivarden didn’t much seem like herself either, looking away, doing none of the posturing I knew her to be capable of. She wasn’t a shy person and held herself—at least part of the time—in high regard. Except when I questioned her abilities in the field—or she perceived me to be doing so—she was generally willing to stand up for herself. “Perhaps I haven’t been as demonstrative—”

Seivarden scoffed again. “Oh, please, Breq. I don’t need you to coddle me. I know I’m not—” I could tell almost immediately that she had started to say something she was already regretting. Her face went ashen and a little gray before heat spread through her body. Shoving herself away, she clamored off the bed and crossed her arms, uncrossed them as she bent toward the floor and picked up her abandoned clothing, the soft, fitted slacks and tunic she wore in her off-hours. She wouldn’t look at me, no matter that I called her name, and fussed with her outfit. Wrapping the bed sheet around my body, I twisted, sitting upright, feet on the floor, and reached for Seivarden’s hand. She flinched out of my grasp. “Forget it, okay? I’m just on edge. It’ll pass.”

But I detected a quaver in her voice that was almost never there, such an unusual sound that I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t forget it. There were a lot of things I was willing to do for Seivarden, but not this, not right now, when all I wanted was for her to climb back into bed, keep me company until my body felt like my own again and wasn’t just an expression of Seivarden’s skills in bed. I still ached pleasantly, thrummed with the ghostly memories of Seivarden’s touch. It wasn’t easy for me to share myself with her in this way, has taken so long for me to come around that I sometimes worried that Seivarden’s words to me once upon a time wouldn’t withhold the strain.

Then, she’d asked me to save a part of myself for her, the part that didn’t belong to Mercy of Kalr, as though I could be partitioned into such clean divisions, asked that I make room for her. And I had. I could say that much for myself, but somewhere along the way, I’d found it wasn’t enough to limit Seivarden to those spaces. I found, too, that I wanted the physicality that I hadn’t thought myself interested in sharing with another person.

It was so obvious to me, so painfully obvious.

But not so to Seivarden apparently.

The fine, smooth muscles of her back twitched as she pulled her tunic on. It wasn’t the cold that made her shiver. I made sure my quarters remained at a temperature that Seivarden considered comfortable. I could hear a slight hitch in her voice when she breathed and the tension in her spine only increased as the moment stretched out between us. She would leave if I didn’t do something, but I didn’t know what to do.

“Seivarden,” I said, because speaking her name was the easiest thing in the world to do. It was just the rest that was difficult. Impossible. How did I—what could I say to Seivarden that would make this right? I’ve hurt her with words that others wouldn’t think to be hurt by, most others anyway. Mercy of Kalr was of no help to me, probably wouldn’t have been even if I wanted her to be. Ship very rarely got involved with what happened between Seivarden and myself, by mutual agreement. “Finish what you were saying. Please. You know you’re not what?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she answered, savage, her shoulders hunching. Her body seemed tight as a drawn bow. If she relaxed even a little bit, neither of us might like what she let loose. “I’m not Lieutenant Awn, okay? I’m not Ship. You don’t have to—to placate me.”

“Placate you? That’s what you think I’m doing here? Placating you?” I get to my feet, heedless of the sheet as it falls from my body, landing half on the bed and half hanging off of it. “Because I would tell you that I think you’re beautiful?”

I wasn’t sure how welcome my touch would be, but I took a chance anyway, brushing my hand over the back of Seivarden’s neck. I’ve made a mistake with her, a long-standing one, and marveled that I hadn’t managed to see it coming at all. She’d seemed so—I thought we understood one another. I was a fool apparently. “How long have you thought this?”

I didn’t have to see Seivarden’s face to know she was gritting her teeth. It was easy to hear in the sound of her voice. “I haven’t thought about it much at all. So I guess I’d have to say never.”

Perhaps that was fair and my question had been a clumsy one. It wasn’t like I’d ever said anything like this to her before. Or anything that might suggest—

I thought, briefly, about my time as Justice of Toren, when I had so many ancillaries, who could and did anything the crew might want of them. At the time, I never felt used, not really, not in any way that mattered. But in retrospect…

I wasn’t so foolish as to think Seivarden thought I was using her, but that didn’t always help the small, unhappy places inside of a person. That didn’t undo the fact that I’d never given her any suggestion that I cared for her in any special way. I let her into my quarters when she wanted to come and we spent a great deal of time with one another and we saved one another’s lives. It had apparently not been obvious to her from the fact that I wanted her was as much as I did. “Seivarden…”

She waved me off with a jerking, unhappy motion of her arm. “It’s fine, Breq. I made my peace with it a long time ago. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” She dragged in a deep, ragged breath. “Just—maybe don’t say things like this, yeah? Even if you think you mean it?”

Anger flared, bright and hot, in my chest. It was very well and good that Seivarden should be so condescending now. It made what I still had left to say easy. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“Breq!”

Grabbing her by the shoulder, I turned her around, held her in place. Her gaze tipped down my body and back up to my face, her cheeks a fraction warmer than before. She didn’t have time to hide the expression of self-loathing on her face and I hated myself a little right now, too, to know that I was the one who put it there, who made her think that—

“You’re an idiot,” I repeated, fear climbing my throat. It clawed at the inside of my mouth, hungering to escape from between my teeth, so many terrible words that I didn’t mean and wouldn’t want Seivarden to hear anyway. She didn’t need to be berated or humbled right now and under these circumstances, I never wanted to do that anyway, though occasionally I was forced to, though only when I deemed it professionally necessary, when I had to be Fleet Captain instead of Breq. Those lines were easy enough to draw. “Seivarden, I care about you.” I swallowed back those fearful words that wanted to come out of my mouth. “I have for a very long time.”

These words, in comparison, should have been easy. But they were not. In some ways, they were harder, even while Seivarden’s eyes widened with hope and desire and a need so fierce that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before, that Mercy of Kalr hadn’t pulled me aside and made me aware of it. How long had Seivarden suffered under the belief that I didn’t care for her in the same way she did for me, in ways that had nothing to do with Lieutenant Awn or Mercy of Kalr or anything except that it was Seivarden.

And that was enough. It being Seivarden was enough. It being Seivarden was entirely the point, because if it was anyone else, I wouldn’t have wanted them in this way. My relationship with Seivarden was unique in the same way that my relationship with Ship was unique was the same as how differently I’d felt about Lieutenant Awn than from anyone else in my life. That didn’t invalidate Seivarden—or it should not have, if I had known to be a better partner to her—and it didn’t make her an inferior option for me, a stand-in for something I couldn’t get back.

“Seivarden, what exactly do you think it is we’ve been doing here?”

“I…” Seivarden’s voice went a little sing-song-y, edged with pain and embarrassment. “I haven’t been entirely sure. And I didn’t want to ask because—” She choked up a bit, giving me all the answer I really needed. She didn’t want to ask because she didn’t want to draw attention to how important it was to her.

_Aatr’s tits. What a fucking mess._ I heard these words inside my head the way Seivarden would have said them and almost laughed, the worst possible thing I could do at the moment, certain to be misconstrued. “Seivarden, come back to bed, please.”

Seivarden’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, an easier emotion to navigate than whatever had crossed her features before. “Why?”

“Because I like having you in my arms and I’ll miss you if you go and I want to show you all the ways you are very much not just a replacement for Lieutenant Awn—” I didn’t say that the things I felt for her were nothing at all like the things I felt about Seivarden. Being a ship’s favorite was not necessarily the same as wanting a lover, though sometimes it could be. “—not to mention, Mercy of Kalr isn’t particularly interested in recreating that—”

“Okay, okay!” Seivarden snapped, momentarily distracted from her woes by my invocation of a particular act that Seivarden was especially fond of and that I enjoyed deeply as well. “I get it.”

I wasn’t sure that Seivarden did, but I would make sure, going forward, that Seivarden was perfectly well aware of my regard for her in every way that mattered the most to her.

I was relieved when Seivarden peeled back out of her tunic and did as I asked, even more relieved when she settled against me and actually relaxed. My fingers ran through her hair, touched every inch of her that was easily accessible to me, as eager for her minutest reactions as she was. “I’m not very good at expressing myself,” I said, an explanation and an apology, but not an excuse. “I’m so sorry that I’ve so…”

“Oh, Breq, do shut up,” she said, embarrassment muddling her words slightly. “I’ve misconstrued you, not the other way around. I’m the one who should be—it’s obvious enough that you—” She barked out a bitter laugh than dare say anything more sentimental. I could not blame her. Too much sentiment might fracture us irrevocably. “I guess we’re both idiots.”

“Maybe a little bit,” I agreed.

“But, uh,” she said, circumspect, “it is good to hear, I suppose. From time to time. Thank you for—for that at least.”

I wasn’t going to tell Seivarden she was welcome, not for this, but I thought maybe she understood what my silence truly meant under the circumstances. Pulling her closer, I pressed a kiss into her hair. I promised her, though only in my heart, definitely not anywhere that she might hear it, that I wouldn’t take her for granted again.

I would ensure that she knew she was loved by me in whatever language she needed to hear it.

Though I do tend toward reticence, in word if not in deed, I might even enjoy it.


End file.
